


Day Nine: Hanging Out with Friends (AKA "This Pub Tab is going to piss off Accounting, Guys.")

by a_xmasmurder



Series: 30 Days of OTP: Bond/Q [9]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 30 Day OTP Challenge, Alec and Q dance together a lot, And can kill your liver, Bonding over alcohol, Drinking waaaay too much, Gen, James Bond: Friendship is Magic, M/M, Sing-a-longs, old songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanging out with friends, in a pub, is about the best thing ever. And then someone opens their pretty little mouth...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Nine: Hanging Out with Friends (AKA "This Pub Tab is going to piss off Accounting, Guys.")

**Author's Note:**

> I had so much fun with this one, and modeled it after an especially good night out with my friends a few years back. Yes, there was random kissing. Yes, I was the only girl... I left out dancing on the bar, though :D
> 
>  
> 
> **I might also be slightly tipsy while writing this. Don't hesitate to nitpick :D**  
> 

“This pleases me. Another!” Q slammed the shot glass down on the bar and giggled, tipping into Eve. She caught him and wrapped her warm arms around him, and he hummed up at her chin and licked her, making her screech and pat at him with her hands. Alec blinked at him and shook his head, turning to look at Bill Tanner with a quizzical quirk to his brows. The Chief of Staff shrugged and pointed at James, who was busy waving the bartender over again.

“Why are you pointing at him? What did he have to do with that?”

“I have no idea, but James usually has an explanation for Q’s behavior half the time.”

"No, not really."

James gathered up the handful of shot glasses in his hands and moved back to his little ragtag group of friends. He paused for a moment, blinking away at them - Eve, Bill, Alec, and Q, his lovely Quartermaster, _Evan_ \- and contemplated the word. _Friend._ Something he wasn’t sure he was allowed to have, but here he was. Getting completely trashed after that messed up vacation, with friends. He smiled, a real smile, something he was finally getting used to again, and pushed the empty glasses away with his hands to make room for the fresh alcohol.

Q plastered himself up against Bond’s side, and mewled at him. “Jaaaaaames, what’d you get me this time?”

“Red Headed Sluts.”

Alec’s head dropped against James’s shoulder and he laughed, long and hard. Everyone joined in, even the old man at the far corner of the bar. James looked down at his watch, his smile growing exponentially. His and Alec’s tab was going to put this pub owner into a mansion, no doubt. Possibly even a Bentley. Maybe even both.

Suddenly, Q and Eve screeched in delight, and Bill started to sing along with the song on the old dusty jukebox in the corner. “ _Tuesday’s gone with the wind, oh my baby’s gone with the wind..._ ”

“Oh, my God.” Alec snorted. “I know this song.”

“ _And I don’t know, oh where I’m going, I just want to beeee left alone!_ ” Q sang pretty good when he was plastered. Everyone joined in on the second chorus, harmonising as only five people who knew each other like the backs of their own hands could. On the instrumental, they finished the shots, smirking with dangerous mouths and grabbing at each other with deadly hands; for once not doing any damage at all.

“Oi, Marcus! Another round of drinks and shots, will you?” Alec stood shakily and gathered Eve and Q into his huge arms, swinging both of them around in a circle off their stools. “ _Train roll on, a many miles away from my home, say I’m riding my blues away. Tuesday, you see, she had to be free, Lord but somehow I’ve got to carry on!_ ”

“ _Tuesday’s gone with the wind,_ ” Eve sang, “ _Tuesday’s gone with the wind, my baby’s gone with the wind!_ ”

“ _Train roll on._ ” Q finished with a flourish, nearly taking out an innocent bystander with his flailing hands.

James hummed the keyboard part as Bill drummed on the bar, right up to the end of the song. The drinks came, and Alec kept dancing with Eve and Q to a song that made the hacker melt against the much bigger man and wow everyone with an amazing voice as he belted out the words to "‘Hymn of the Big Wheel’!" Q shouted at him...something only he was familiar with, of course.

********  
  
  
  
  


They’d been there since Marcus had unlocked his door that morning, starting the day out with a fatty fried breakfast and lagers. The tab had started then, because today someone else was running the SIS, and it wasn’t their fucking problem anymore. They had twenty four hours to spend away from the horrors of the world, and each of them ended up picking the same place. James and Alec had shown up first, determined to see just how much alcohol they could consume before having to go to the hospital. Eve and Bill showed up a few minutes later with the same plan, Bill muttering something about the kids at the sitter’s and his wife out getting her hair done or something. Q rolled in at ten a.m. sharp, looking for the world like a hipster who’d just crawled out from the woods after shagging a bush. Well, not really. He looked rather good for closing his eyes and picking random items of clothing out and slapping them on with some strategically placed scarves and -

“God, your glasses are completely ridiculous with that shirt, Evan.” Eve plucked the plastic framed monstrosities off his face and turned them in her hands. “Completely ridiculous.” James found himself thinking that Q looked just fine in the glasses, and looked even better with nothing  _but_ the glasses on.

“Do not hate my glasses, nor my shirt.” Q snatched his glasses back and waved at the bartender. “Marcus, I need a straight vodka and a lager.”

“Vodka?” Bill stared at Q. “This early in the morning?”

“Yes. Bad night, programming, someone messed up somewhere and I had to stay up all night fixing it, and can we get this show on the road yet? I want to be properly plowed by five p.m.."

And that’s how Bond knew it was going to be an interesting day.

********  
  
  
  
  


He watched new people walk in and settle down at the tables to listen to Alec and Q’s impromptu duet on ‘I Want To Break Free’. James snorted when a wild Eve appeared in his lap. “Heeeello, darling Eveningstar.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

The next song started with a shout of “Oooooh, I love Marilyn Manson! I love this song!”, and Q hopped over and pressed his drink against James’s lips. “Drink, lovely. And James has just done a Very Good Thing and somewhat quoted Lord Of the Rings.” He scowled prettily. “I think.”

James laughed and drank the sweet concoction that Q had convinced Marcus to make earlier in the night. “You are such a geek. It’s lovely, Evan.”

“I knoooooow it is. Well, the drink is. Not sure about being a geek. It has its ups and downs.” He smiled and twirled away to press the drink against Bill’s lips. “Drink, you cocky bastard!”

“Oh, James gets called lovely, and I get called a bastard?” Bill took the drink from Q’s hands and finished it, handing it back to a perplexed hacker.

“That’s because I’m not shagging you. And you drank my drink!”

“You told me to!”

“I told....I did, didn’t I? Um. Not the whole thing, you doofus!” Q giggled and slumped up against the bar. “MARCUS! This one you should put on Alec’s tab, because he said so.”

James couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation because his brain had stopped processing once the words Q said worked their way past his alcohol-inhibited senses. _He just...told Bill Tanner that he was shagging me. He. Just told. The CHIEF of FUCKING STAFF that HE was SHAGGING ME._ He watched dumbly as Q tipped against Alec and laughed with his whole body, not a care in the fucking world, and watched Alec set his hands on Q’s hips, not with intent but for balance. _RED ALERT. KLAXONS. DANGER WILL ROBINSON. FUCK with a capital FUCK._ He realised that Eve was still on his lap, and was saying something to him. He turned towards her.

“What is wrong, James? You look like something just crawled into your ear!”

He stared at her. “I’m stupid.”

“You are stupidly drunk, yes, because your hand is working its way into my skirt, and if it gets another centimeter you will be missing a finger.”

Bond blinked, and jerked his hand away from Eve’s hip. “Sorry.”

Eve broke out in a high pitched screech of laughter. “Oh, shit. You _are_.”

“I’m what?”

“You _are_ shagging him.” She smiled brightly at him. “You would have never reacted like that if you weren't. Oh, this is perfect. That is great. Though I think Tanner won that pool.”

Bond only blinked at her. “What?”

“Oh, come here, you poor thing.” She enveloped him in a hug as ‘Just Like Heaven’ came on, sending Alec and Q out into the open space behind them again to dance...rather well for two sloshed men. They garnered hoots and claps and shouts from the new customers, and Marcus shook his head from drying glasses. James saw all of this, but it wasn’t registering past the _OH SHIT EVERYONE KNOWS SOUND THE ALARMS FUCK_ going off in his head. “Bill!” Eve waved the man over. “James here is having a mental critical event because Q blurbed a bit to you.”

Bill clapped Bond on the shoulder lightly. “We’ve known since that day you took him home after he started glitching. It was just a matter of time before it would come out.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. If someone has a problem with it, that someone will be out of a job.”

“What if that someone is - the boss?” James almost growled ‘M’, but stopped when someone siddled up behind him to order a drink.

“Eve and I can run the place until we find a replacement.”

Bond blinked at them again, not quite certain he actually understood what he just heard. “You can’t fire him.”

Bill only smiled wider. Eve nuzzled his neck, and Q materialised out of thin air and licked a stripe up the other side of Bond’s neck and giggled, “Hello, lovely", at him.

Involuntarily, James leaned back, melting into Eve’s tight embrace and the increasing attentions from the hacker, and relaxed, suddenly not giving a shit who the hell knew. “I’m going to die, aren’t I? Things this good only happen before I die.” Alec drifted closer and handed him a shot glass full of whatever the fuck, he didn’t even care anymore. “At least I can die happy.”

Q growled against his neck. “Don’t say that, you daft bastard. Yooooou are going to be just fine.” He prodded Bond’s shoulder with a stiff finger and held up his own shot glass. “A toast!” He pushed away and shouted to the pub as a whole. "May you never lie, steal, cheat or drink. But if you must lie, lie in each other's arms. If you must steal, steal kisses. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink with us, your friends"

“Here, here!” Someone shouted from the end of the bar, and James laughed hard, took his shot, and wrapped his arms around Q, nearly knocking Eve of her perch. He buried his face into the crook of the hacker’s neck, daring to bite a mark into that pale skin, and Q howled and giggled and pulled at Bond’s hair. In his heart, James was inexplicably, irrationally, incredibly happy for once in his horrid existence, and couldn’t believe that these people around him had put that feeling there. No amount of women, booze, pain pills or blood lost could make him feel anything other than emptiness and disgust. But here, in this tiny pub on a tiny side street hidden in the heart of London, surrounded by people as fucked up as he was - _my friends, one and all_ \- he was finally at ease and at home.

He was happy.

 


End file.
